Thursday, August 20, 2009

hey! so as you can see, there's still no post for comic 625. That is of course because I never got one e-mailed to me by whatever he is. That's ok, I'll write it myself, just not now. I'll do it tomorrow. As early as possible so I can still leave it up for a bit before I post the thing for 626, which as astoundingly already been sent to me.

also I will maybe be Away from The Internet for a week or so. Don't worry, Thomas will take care of you here. BUT - one thing thomas can't do: approve moderated comments. So the comments (on anything older than 2 weeks) are going to be a bit slow for a while probably. deal with it.

This comic is really good in a vacuum! However, the one flaw I can give it is thus: CSI Miami humor is really old, scores of other webcomics and other assorted websites have made this joke to about the same amount of skill that Randall has (there is only really one way to tell this joke, unless you count the one where he puts on a pair of sunglasses while already using sunglasses.)long before this comic. So my opinion of this would be much greater if CSI just entered it's second season and Randall wanted us all to know what an awesome show he has been watching.

Oh doublepost worthy material: Is it just me or has Randall replaced all his math and science material with the meta surrounding math and science. Like early on he made jokes about specific functions, but now he does exclusively jokes about who made a certain science or whether Franklin gave the charges the right symbols.

Oh, and from what I gather, Newton was a bit of a jackass, so I can see him seeing the events as the comic as Randall put them, instead of how they technically historically happened.

I hate to say it, but I think The Horatio does improve the timing of the comic. The problem is that Randall found a way to make mediocre puns into mediocre strips, and goddamn it if he's going to give it up without a fight.

Agreed with Kirk. Furthermore, it was Leibniz's work that really paved the way for modern calculus; the Newtonian method of integration was far too ugly.

Leibniz believed that every problem could be solved if you created a notation that was elegant enough to solve it. If he had ever looked at Newton's work, Leibniz would have probably just called him a hopeless hack.

Yeah, you know that dick? Back in kindergarten or whatever, that dick who, when you were gushing about all the things Santa brought you, snidely informed you that "Santa's not real"? You remember how you felt, that hollow feeling inside, because you'd known, you'd KNOWN all along, but it had been so nice to pretend, and now you couldn't, the magic had died and you just couldn't play make believe anymore?

It would have been good if he hadn't thrown the CSI thing in there. God, I am so sick of Randall trying to milk dead memes. This would have been HILARIOUS a year ago, when the whole CSI "YEAAAAAH" thing was at the height of its popularity. Now it's just another sad example of how Randall just pulls these references out of his bag of retard tricks for lack of actual cleverness.

i would have totally liked the comic if it weren't for the sunglasses thing. seriously, why is randy so bad at delivering puns? it is like he is pathologically incapable of punning without, like, lampshading the fact that it's a pun.

I should clarify something. I like the timing because, even without the reference, it's still a pun that I laughed at. The joke holds it's own. And THEN there's a reference. It actually ends the comic nicely, without Leibniz saying "I hate you" after the punchline. Though I may be biased; I'm the kind of guy who doesn't shy away from well-timed "that's what she said" jokes, despite them being older than dirt.

I'm a sucker for timing, and Randall made made his pun work despite an old joke. A+ would buy again.

I chuckled at the pun and laughed at the reference. I genuinely wasn't expecting it!

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I don't think this was a case of "quick, make this pun funnier". If I had thought of this scene myself, I would have thought of it exactly like this, sunglasses and all, and I would have giggled to myself in line at the supermarket while everyone wondered what's so funny about Tic-Tacs.

Alright, I know there's no "winning" in a comment section, but. I feel the need to stand my ground here.

I starting reading XKCD almost entirely to see quick jokes done well. If he made the comic "Solar Plexus" now, how many people would see it as a cop-out? And yet, reading that strip was the moment I knew I was hooked.

Half the reason I started seeking out this blog is that Randall stopped making things like this. He started trying to add shit, making everything more complicated, and he started to fail at timing. His ego has gotten bigger, so now he's making an Art Work, and why should I make myself laugh if I can make my audience laugh with less work? Anyway, my reviews all have something to do with the execution, not the joke.

Today's joke was fast and punny. I like 'em that way. You say low standards, I say let's call a spade a spade.

Apparently it's an old meme, but it's new to me. I watch CSI:Miami, but never saw it as a meme. Actually, I always thought the sunglasses thing was very 80's and that Horatio was sort of taken off of that. So, to me, the comic was a pun with a reference. Pun was the comic, reference added for fun.

But even if it's an old meme, I don't care. Partly because I like old memes. But, more importantly, it added that beat, panel 4, that was needed to make the pun work. If you were making this pun in real life, you'd add that beat. Without something happening in the fourth panel, it's either just spreading the text of two panels which feels sloppy or loses the beat which loses the joke.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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